Over the course of the past year, Battery has been working on designing an enclosure for MSXV.
Two options were explored, impound in-box and impound in-vehicle. To determine which option would be deemed best, two design sprints were conducted; the first from September-December 2022 and the second from January-April 2023. The enclosure design was finalized by July 2023 and a prototype was manufactured by September 2023.
The team hopes to finish the enclosure for the car by October 2023 [IN PROGRESS]
Main takeaways + lessons learned from MSXV:
Having 2 design sprints was a good idea. The finalized design for the enclosure took inspiration from multiple enclosures from the 1st design sprint
Less second-guessing and more doing:
For the 2nd design sprint, instead of exploring options for impound in-box and impound in-vehicle enclosures, one of the two options should have been chosen so more relevant ideas for the enclosure design could have been implemented
To help finalize the enclosure design, the team worked on fan-testing for a month. Looking back, this testing was wasted time as the team already had an idea of which fans they wanted to use from the beginning
More enforced deadlines and a vision for the end-goal would have saved delays and a lot of stress during the enclosure manufacturing phase. It also would have helped new members with giving them motivation for what needs to be done.
Mistakes made when manufacturing the prototype enclosure were:
When CADING the 3D printed fan holders for the enclosure, forgot to take into consideration the fillet of the laser cutter (minimum 1/8”), and forgot to tolerance them to fit (had to sand the edges down)
When drilling holes into the fiberglass for the enclosure + when cutting the metal angles, being more careful with measuring the first time so more time is saved
Technique for angle-grinder: cut the long side first, then the edges, results in a cleaner edge
